Germany’s big Russian mole scandal gets worse — and involves America
John Schindler
Last month, just in time for Christmas, Germany got an unwelcome present. Namely, its biggest spy scandal in decades, with the arrest of a suspected Russian mole embedded deep inside Berlin’s intelligence system.
The suspect, identified in Germany only as Carsten L. due to stringent privacy laws (his surname is Linke), is a 52-year-old married father and colonel in the German military who, since 2010, was assigned to the Federal Intelligence Service, or BND.
This arrest has set off alarm bells far beyond Berlin. Not only is Linke a senior intelligence official, but the BND, which in American terms is the CIA and NSA combined, has a close relationship with multiple Western intelligence agencies. Worse, Linke held a top job inside the BND’s technical intelligence office, which handles signals intelligence, or SIGINT. Linke’s shop worked exceptionally closely with Five Eyes Anglosphere partners such as the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ. Everything Linke saw, which constituted mountains of highly sensitive SIGINT from across NATO, has to be assumed to have been compromised. Or put another way, fed to Moscow.
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German intelligence has long had counterintelligence problems, particularly regarding Russia, but the fact that the BND had a high-level Kremlin mole was revealed last year when a Western intelligence partner came across classified information inside Russian data it managed to purloin from Moscow. There could be no doubt that the BND had a high-level Russian mole, so Berlin was informed through spy channels, and from there, it didn’t take too long to track down Linke.
Since Linke’s arrest, the NSA, GCHQ, and several other Western intelligence agencies have commenced a large-scale joint assessment to determine what damage the rogue colonel did to his own agency and its NATO partners. The compromise of Five Eyes programs targeting Russia comes at a terrible time, as Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine is about to enter its second year and the West ramps up military aid to Kyiv. Linke’s arrest has caused bad feelings in London and Washington amid whispers that British and American intelligence cut off the supply of certain secrets to Berlin out of fear they might wind up in Moscow.
What motivated Linke to betray his country and NATO remains murky. While money was a likely motive, there are indications that the suspect’s politics had taken a pro-Kremlin turn. This is a depressingly common phenomenon in Germany. Moreover, Linke’s personal life was messy. I’m told it included a pair of mistresses, which may have given Russian intelligence something to work with. Although kompromat, Russian intelligence’s form of blackmail, is seldom the top motivation to betray secrets, it can entice fence-sitters to get in bed with a hostile intelligence service.
That said, the Linke case could have gotten even worse, since at the time of his arrest, he had been selected for a new top job at the BND: the head of internal security. That someone as dubious as Linke had been chosen to head that service’s counterintelligence shop explains why the BND was unable to find any Russian mole without incriminating tips from Western partner spy agencies.
Since Linke’s arrest, there has been informed speculation that he wasn’t acting alone, and now we know that’s true. On Sunday, German police arrested Arthur E. at Munich airport as he was returning from the United States. The suspect is not a BND employee. Instead, he apparently was working as a courier for Linke to dispatch stolen secrets to Moscow, bringing back cash in return. According to German reports, the new suspect collaborated with Linke since 2020 in their clandestine operation to sell secrets to Moscow, an activity that intensified in 2022.
Arthur E. remains a shadowy figure. Apparently, he has mixed German-Russian background and he ostensibly works in the jewels and metals trade. He has been remanded into custody since his arrest as German authorities untangle the exact relationship between him and Linke. His arrest came when the FBI tipped off German authorities that Arthur E. was on his way back to Germany. According to some reports, U.S. authorities spoke with Arthur E. as he was departing this country, at which point he confessed to working for the intelligence services, setting off alarm bells.
We can be certain that Western intelligence agencies know more about Linke’s spy ring than they’re telling the public. The preeminent question now is: Does this Kremlin spy network have still more members, yet undetected? Is there even more damage yet to be unmasked? That’s what counterspies in Berlin and Washington, plus several NATO capitals in between, are asking.
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John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.